


Sweaters For Strippers

by revenant_oozi



Category: DCU, DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pain, Permanent Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-31
Updated: 2012-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-06 09:24:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/417290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revenant_oozi/pseuds/revenant_oozi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gone, not coming back, detached, missing in action, but Roy probably doesn't know that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweaters For Strippers

A few days after Lian gets on a school bus for the first time, Roy's arm is gone.

Gone, not coming back, detached, missing in action, but Roy probably doesn't know that.

Lian survives the devastation of the city with a broken arm, bruised ribs, and some partial temporary hearing loss. She'll wear a cast for a few weeks and watch her cartoons with the volume louder.

Roy will never be able to pick her up again, or pull back a bow string, or play foosball. Dick isn't sure why that seems important, in the long list of things the loss of an arm entails, but by the end of the first night standing around the medical bay, he's topped the list with a miserable image of Roy attempting the YMCA.

It makes him feel sick in all the wrong ways.

Lian is curled up in the crook of his remaining appendage, sleeping the deep slumber only kids can. The emptiness on the other side of the bed went unnoticed until someone told her, and even then it didn't seem to bother her much. She just wanted her daddy.

He was too critical to even wake up for an hour, so he could hold her hand when she got her cast. Dick had to do it, let her wrap her little fingers around his leather-gloved thumb and soothe her every time she sniffled and asked where her daddy was, _I want daddy, please?_

He figured she must be her father's daughter to reject _Batman_ offering her a hand and a lollipop, kid wasn't about to roll over for that one.

Theres some crayons lost in the bedsheets now, distracting fodder for her anytime Roy woke up trying to thrash and growling through his teeth at how much it hurt. _My arm hurts._ Never was it _My arm's gone._ The phantom feeling is still taking over. 

Dick has spent hours thinking of how to tell him when he wakes up. But every time one seems acceptable, the fucking image of Roy trying to hold his daughter with one arm comes back to his head and he starts all over again.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The prosthetic is metal and cold. Dick hates it. He'd rather Roy just left it off when he's home. Roy insists he's just trying to get used to it, but he doesn't miss the way he grinds his teeth when it's in place. It fucking hurts, and everyone knows it.

Roy knows it most of all, but he made it a point to put Dick in charge of his pills. A moment of clarity in the shitstorm thats closed in around him the last few weeks.

It used to be how is he going to stand being home knowing Lian is at school, maybe getting picked on or missing her daddy. Now its how is he going to going to get dressed in the morning, and trying to write his own name with his left hand.

"Just two Roy, okay? I'm sorry." Sorry, yeah. Everyone is so damn sorry. He's sure Roy is sick of it. Sorry isn't going to give him the capabilities of a starfish. Roy doesn't protest, just swallows them down and balls up his fist, bites down on it.

_It fucking hurts._

Sleeping was somewhat of a struggle. Dick didn't usually stay more than a night at a time, in the window and back out it. It had always worked for them, sometimes fucking and sometimes not, never fucking anyone else but the option always open.

Now as he looks around, he realizes he's half moved in already, slowly bringing things over he might need, each night turning into another day. Roy wanted to be alone, but no one would take that. Dinah offered to take Lian until he 'figured things out', but around midnight there they were, knocking on her door. Taking her away just seemed to make things worse. Made things feel different when he didn't want them to.

Dick tried rubbing at his shoulder, maybe ease the nerves that were still reacting as if there was a limb there, when there isn't. He supposes its worse at night, when Roy can't distract himself, laying awake with all the thoughts a one-armed man could think up. Panic attacks. Phantom pain claws, digging into him. Dick just rubs gently at his chest, willing him to sleep for a few hours, _Let the pills kick in, Roy. Its okay._

Its far from okay, but he has to try.

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Six months in, the cold metal arm leaves its case less and less.

Lian learns to be still and prop one foot up on his hip and hold her little arms around his neck when he picks her up, and despite the strain it must have on his shoulder, Roy smiles every time she reaches for him and demands, _'Up!'_

She can't quite break the habit of walking on his right side, but instead of grasping at air for his hand, she takes to gripping his pant leg, or a belt loop if she can reach it.

Dick finds himself moving back out, slowly but surely. It doesn't seem to bother either of them. Maybe loss-of-limb just didn't need to be the thing to force them into the world of couple-ism.

Roy jokes that Dick should set him up in a wheelchair with a surplus get-up and set him in a seedy strip club so he can _'Rant about 'nam and scare all the normies'._

It wasn't funny the first time he suggested it, and it's really not funny now, but Dick laughs anyway and politely declines, suggesting he take up knitting instead, "Not so much knitting, more like unraveling balls of yarn. Seriously I think you'd be really good at it."

He still can't get that painfully unfunny image of Roy doing YMCA out of his head, the one that always pops up just in time to make his smiles falter.

No more panic attacks at night, but Dick still finds himself rubbing a hand over his chest while the pills take time to work, the motion comforting to himself more than Roy, probably.

Connor comes over when it's bad and Dick can't be there. Roy doesn't need someone helping him limp through his life all the time, he can look after Lian just fine, and she's old enough to figure out a phone and call someone when Roy is having a noticeably off day.

Dick doesn't worry when he's gone. Connor is family, he can butt heads with Roy all he wants and it's not going to change anything, and as much as he hates his little brother looking out for him, Roy listens when Connor squares his jaw and puts his foot down.

Coming through the window, Dick is quiet as always, but the sharp hiss of it waking the tawny blond isn't missed. Roy must be dosed, he doesn't stir from his place curled over his brother's chest.

"Lian called me. Said he didn't get her up for school today." Connor rests his cheek against the messy red hair, rubbing little circles into his back to keep him asleep, "Been kinda out of it since I got here."

Dick just nods, peeling off the kevlar and trying not to look at Roy as this broken thing Connor is trying to hold together.

Despite needing a shower, he forgoes in favor of sliding into the sheets and stretching a toned arm across Roy's waist, twisting his fingers into the string of Connor's sweatpants.

"Let him sleep it off. He can always start up knitting another day."

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea where I keep pulling Dick/Roy stories from. They just happen and there isn't a reason I can find. Other than I feel bad for Roy. And I love limb-loss in some sick George Lucus way. Also, this is totally depressing.


End file.
